My Tier 1 Lenses are still pushing strong

I keep checking every day to see how my T1 lenses are holding up, and so far they're doing ok. I'm still extremely puzzled about the lens I made on November 4 about the free printable alphabet stencils that it got so far up to Tier 1 - within the same month.

Just for fun and to have it for posterity, here is a screenshot of the stats for this lens so far. See how fast it went up from 270,576 all the way to less than 1000 practically within 2 weeks. Hope it stays in tier 1 so I can enjoy the passive income from it (tier 1 lenses get around $47 or so per month.

Still Troubles With Indexing In Google

I posted earlier about Google not indexing various Squidoo lenses. In the meantime that lens got indexed, however I discovered another lens that I created October 16th, which is still not indexed in Google. That sux, especially with Christmas so close.

I was hoping that lens would start making some sales by Christmas, but if it's yet to be indexed, it will definitely need lots of time to rank. I hate it when Google does this. Wizzley posts, on the other hand, get indexed within practically 30 minutes - every single time.

Here is the lens on decorative wine glasses - and here's hoping that finally it will get indexed - before Christmas is over.

3 Years Old At Squidoo

Just 3 days ago I became 3 years old at Squidoo. In fact I completely forgot about it until I got 500 point for my 'Squidbirthday', so when I checked the date of my joining Squidoo, it was 18th November 2009. Nice touch from Squidoo on giving me points :)

The first 2.5 years I wasn't serious about Squidoo at all. In fact I only used it the Warrior Forum way, to backlink to my main sites, and not caring about quality almost at all. However this year in May I had a second look at Squidoo and realized its real potential. While I haven't started writing seriously at that time, I did start writing more lenses (1-2 a week) and tweaking a bit some of my older ones to look better than when initially started.

But the real hard work began beginning September, after I've just come back from holidays from a 2 weeks trip in Greece. Since then I've put up a new page almost every day and started looking more serious at backlinking and bringing my lenses to higher quality and to possibly earning a better income from it. So let's see how I'll be looking at it all in a year, when I'll celebrate 4 years at Squidoo!

Tier 1 Lenses

I'm super excited: two of my lenses are now in Tier 1. The first lens I've ever created on panic attacks while driving is the one, and I've been working at it for over 2 years for it to happen, and the second is my very new lens on Free printable alphabet stencils. Now this second lens is very new, I've made it November 4 and it already hit Tier 1, how cool is that!

But what is the big deal with the Tier 1 lenses? Well, we not only get paid at Squidoo for the affiliate sales we make, but we also get tier payments every months. So for example if a lens was averaging a tier 1 throughout the entire month, 2 months later (the payments are always 2 months back, just like with Amazon payments) that  lens will get paid a nice little sum of money.

Here are the tier ranks and payments for the Tier1, 2 and 3. Tier 4 doesn't really get anything, although there were cases when there were just a few cents allocated to some tier 4 lenses.

Tier1: rank 1 to 2000 $47.12
Tier 2: rank 2001 to 10,000 $8.01
Tier 3: 10,001 to 85,000 41c
Tier 4: below 85,000 nada

Most people have their lenses in tier 3 as it's quite difficult to get higher tiers for the lenses. Of course the higher the tier, the more fierce the competition. For tier 2, throughout the entire Squidoo, only 2000 lenses make it to the top. Considering that there are practically hundreds of new lensmasters joining Squidoo every day, that's dearly little!

Now of course, only to be able to keep these two lenses in Tier 1 and get more of my tier 3 lenses to tier 2 and 1! That's my goal (except making regularly new lenses) for the immediate future.

I Love Herbs and their Natural Healing Properties

I remember as a kid I used to go to the nearby forest (we lived about a mile from the start of the forest, at the beautiful Carpathian mountains) and gather all sorts of herbs, starting from wild chamomile, various types of mint, and even a few types of mushrooms while I was there.

I was drying the herbs, then mixing various types together to make interesting blends of herbs for teas. I was even drying the cherry tails and strawberry leaves - they are making some wonderful smelling teas.

I'm living in Cyprus now, so if I want to get some herbs, I have to go to the supermarket and buy them there. Not the same experience, let me tell you.

Just yesterday I wrote a lens on my favorite herbs for relaxation, adding my top 5 preferred herbs, lemon balm (melissa), passion flower, chamomile, lavender and valerian root. These are some great herbs that help with relaxation, stress relief and even insomnia. I love especially making herbal teas from them, but some, like lavender are also used as essential oils in aromatherapy or natural perfumery, or even at a Reiki session with a Reiki therapist.